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Victoria Wang

Professor Ellen Pratt


English 3103 036H
18 September 2014
A Subjective Truth on College Tuition
College tuition has had its shares of controversy. In fact, many have narrowed
down the factors for choosing the right institution to the investment alone. The rapid
increase in tuition along the years has not made the problem any easier, *+ tuition
and fees have skyrocketed in the last five years. In Arizona, for example, parents have
seen a 77 percent increase in costs. In Georgia, it's 75 percent, and in Washington State,
70 percent. (1) As Claudio Sanchez stresses in his article How The Cost of College Went
From Affordable to Sky-High, the pursuit for a higher education is becoming something
close to a luxury; for many, it has even become unreachable. Due to this emergent crisis,
many options have been proposed with the intention of lessening the economic burden
and making it possible for everyone to obtain a college-level education. Need-based
financial aid, scholarships and loans are all different methods offered by pricey
institutions in order to finance the heavy tuition costs they stipulate. Federal loans have
also taken part in lessening the total prices, in addition to other federal grants.
Presently, there exist an enormous amount of external aids that are meant to make
college affordable and give everyone an opportunity to earn a degree. Why then is the
argument of college affordability still in debate? As facts, surveys and studies reveal, the

effectiveness of these assistances has been put to the test and results have been eye
opening.
Because college tuition mostly concerns parents, the most favorable option is
usually the attainment of a number of scholarships. These have been made available for
students with any type of talent conceivable as well as any type of nationality and/or
ethnic background. Although a wide variety of scholarships exist, the amount of
students who apply for these is superfluous, thus making the chances of a single person
winning extremely slim. In fact, the chances of winning a scholarship may be compared
to those of winning the lottery. As Michelle Singletary reveals in her article Get Real On
Scholarships, Only about one in 10 undergraduate students in bachelors degree
programs wins a private scholarship, on average about $2,800 a year. (7) The fact that
the number of people receiving these grants is so low, and that the amount of money is,
on average, less than approximately 5.1% of one-years tuition leads one to believe that
scholarships are not the most effective source of external financial aid. At most, they
serve as complementary help.
In addition to these miniscule assistances, colleges usually offer students needbased financial aid better known as the FAFSA. The idea behind this second alternative
is that students are rewarded a loan that will help parents pay for annual tuition based
on the family income. The catch in this case is that even though the system is incomebased, it usually disregards additional expenses; not to mention the system used to
calculate what one is eligible for is extremely tedious and confusing to fill out. Because
of its complexity, it administers a wider margin or error for whoever is filling it out and

consequentially, this may lead the person to have a disadvantage in his or her reward. In
fact, the system as a whole is not very user-friendly. Authors Mary Feeney and John
Heroff dedicated an entire paper to expose some of the FAFSAs drawbacks. In their
work Barriers to Need-Based Financial Aid: Predictors of Timely FAFSA Completion
Among Low-Income Students they affirm, the FAFSA assumes that parents can and will
support their college-bound student and that the parents financial status is stable. (4;
par. 5) In other words, the FAFSA also fails as a dependable aid because of the fact that
a specific economic stance is assumed regardless of the reality of someones financial
status. For families with supplementary expenses, this alone is enough to condemn this
need-based financial aid as an unreliable source for economic assistance.
An additional third option for financing ones education is acquiring a private or
student loan. These, particularly those with very low-income rates, have been known to
relieve parents and students from large economic burdens. However, by using loans,
one might as well be putting off having to pay an enormous amount of money that will
inevitably accumulate and increase. In other words, borrowers might end up having to
pay for more than the original amount. Loans are only given out to people who have
some credit score history, and because first-year students usually do not fill out this
criteria, they require the intervention of a co-signer. When agreeing to take out a
specific amount of money, one does it with the condition of eventually paying off the
debt. In the case where a co-signer is involved, if a student fails to repay the amount
taken out, the responsibility falls upon whoever co-signed for the student to receive the
loan, thus placing this person, as well as his or her credit, on the line.

Bibliography
Feeney, Mary and Heroff, John (2013) "Barriers to Need-Based Financial Aid: Predictors
of Timely FAFSA Completion Among Low-Income Students," Journal of Student
Financial Aid: Vol. 43: Iss. 2, Article 2.
Sanchez, Claudio. "How The Cost Of College Went From Affordable To Sky-High."NPR.
N.p., 18 Mar. 2014. Web. 17 Sept. 2014.
Singletarry, Michelle. "Get Real on Scholarships." Washington Post. The Washington
Post, 12 Mar. 2011. Web. 17 Sept. 2014.

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